Ready Or Not, Here We Come

"Ready Or Not, Here We Come" is the inaugural show presented by Garde Rail Gallery. The title is in reference to the undiscovered talent on display by Fryma Mantel, Raymond Kempe, and Roberto Valenza, as well as the introduction of "folk" art to a town and region that has yet to truly experience this wonderful genre.

Fryma Mantel draws from her psychic energy through meditation to create colourful paintings in a refreshing and primitive style. Her paintings seem to vibrate with colour and energy, as do her "psychic portraits", painted while in sitting with her subject, done after a psychic reading.

Raymond Kempe fashions sculpture from objects found in his Pioneer Square neighborhood and beyond, put together with precision and often quite humorous vision. Feathers, bottlecaps, skulls, brooms, nests and even dead birds find themselves at the mercy of the artists' whimsy.

Roberto Valenza has "been a poet longer than a painter" and his poetry overflows onto his canvas. His paintings, done in charcoal, pastels, and acrylic, display a fluidity of movement fitting to his scenes of animals, mother earth, and other-wordly natives.